ATLANTA—Shares of cold-storage REIT Americold Realty Trust began trading Friday on the New York Stock Exchange under the COLD ticker after the company priced its initial public offering at $16 per share, the high end of the IPO's price range. The IPO was upsized to 45.3 million common shares from the 24 million originally announced on Jan. 9.
A portfolio company of Ron Burkle's Yucaipa Cos., COLD initially planned an IPO in 2010 but the offering was scrapped, reportedly due to market conditions. Published reports say the Blackstone Group sought to buy COLD last fall but was turned down when Burkle judged the $3-billion bid to be too low. The current IPO could value COLD at up to $4 billion, Seeking Alpha reported last month.
In addition to the 45.3 million shares trading in the IPO, COLD and the selling shareholders have granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 6.975 million shares at the IPO price. BofA Merrill Lynch, J.P. Morgan and RBC Capital Markets are acting as the joint book-running managers for the offering. Rabo Securities, Baird, Citizens Capital Markets, Raymond James, SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, BB&T Capital Markets and BTIG are acting as co-managers
COLD intends to use proceeds from the IPO to pay down some $809 million in debt. In its IPO registration statement with the SEC, COLD says it's the world's largest owner/operator of temperature-controlled storage facilities, with a portfolio totaling 945.3 million cubic feet of storage space across the US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Argentina. The IPO makes it the first publicly traded REIT in the cold-storage sector, according to the registration statement.
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Paul Bubny
Paul Bubny is managing editor of Real Estate Forum and GlobeSt.com. He has been reporting on business since 1988 and on commercial real estate since 2007. He is based at ALM Real Estate Media Group's offices in New York City.
